2014.03.31 - Multi-Villain Bonus
The rainy weather isn't enough to scare of too many people away from the mall this Sunday afternoon. People are shopping and enjoying sales. The food court is populated and there's a small crowd of people gathered at the local sunglasses shop? Why? Well the teen of steel and sensational hero Superboy is in the house! In full costume, he's browsing for new sunglasses and soaking up the attention of the crowd. Of course he's not the only person here in costume. In a video game store, a young man in bright red costume is playing one of the display titles...against himself. That's right, there are two of him. And when one of their cars crashes off a bridge and bursts into virual flames, he glowers. "Enough of this! It's time for a sale!" he declares. And then suddenly there are a lot more of him filling the store and others spreading through the mall. They're stealing things off shelves and even shaking people down for wallets and jewelery. Not in costume...it's in the bag slung over her shoulder...Marissa Sometimes, known to many as Mend, is peeking at clothes in one of the stores. Until she hears the commotion...at which point she's ducking to one side to change as quickly as she can. "Honestly, a girl can never have a day off," she grumbles as she tugs on what looks quite a bit like a Bat-clan utility belt, although she wears no logos. Her color scheme is still quite recognizable, though. Hrm. Duplicating thief. Fun. "Hzzn." Atomic Robo is a short, squat metal man -- with a rounded head and bright blue luminescent eyes. He is currently clad in white tank top and a buttoned up honolulu shirt so bright it looks radioactive -- cargo pants -- and a belt with a holstered pistol, battery pack, and secondary pistol, both tucked underneath the shirt. At this very moment, he is standing in front of a Radioshack display, where a small remote controlled robot is currently being demonstrated. Said robot is being controlled by a boy, who has yet to notice the fact that a much larger robot is hovering above him, watching with fascination as the boy works. At the sound of a commotion, Atomic Robo straightens -- head swiveling about, blue eyes pulsing with color. "--eh?" Longshot's technically not in costume. It just so happens that he only really has the one outfit. Black leather jacket with a white star logo on it, and leather pants and combat boots. Jennifer had tried to get him other outfits but really he didn't feel right in other clothes. These were part of him as his four fingers were. He happened to be walking buy the video game store when this all happened. Funnily enough last time he was at a mall he got attacked at a video game store, "You know I'm starting to believe what the TV news people say, video games do cause violence." He unzipped his jacket slightly to reveal a bandolier of small blades and grabbed a few, "Alright then Multiple Person Villain guy! Why don't we stop all this before things get violent. While I'm good at violence, I'm not really much of a fan of it." Eddie is in the mall walking around a chance to get out of the rain. He is wandering the area. "Oh look shawarma palace we could go for some taste shawarma." Eddie says out loud to himself as he goes towards the food court. Still unaware of the commotion that is going on. Eddie is at the counter ordering his shawarmas and gyros when suddenly the commotion has spread to the food court. "Hey what the hell is all this about!" Eddie shouts as someone snatches his money out of his hand and starts trying to shake him down for anything else he has. Not too long after the chaos starts, a suit of red and black 'on the cheap' recycled power armor arrives on the scene. The helmet moves around, and a digitized, inhuman-sounding voice states, "Duplicator adversary. Locate possible allies." Thus she notices Mend, Atomic Robo, and Supwerboy. She heads for the one she knows, even if Mend doesn't know her, first. "Mend. Correct?" Same voice, "I'm the Tin Can. I'm proposing an effort in cooperation." Then Longshot comes in, and there's a brief pause, when she speaks to him, the voice may have changed slightly in pitch, "Not a fan of violence man. I'm the Tin Can, Let's work together." She is trying to remain professional, but... well, that's hard. She distracts herself by looking at Atomic Robo. "Mister Robot, sir, are you equipped to help out?" In the food court, there are multiple Billys. Several are stealing food and eating it right then and there. "This is some good pizza, Billy!" "Y'all should come get some cookies!" "Dibs on the Panda Express!" they all speak, mostly to one another. The one by Eddie splits into three, all trying to look intimidating. "Hand over your wallet and nobody gets hurt." In the video game store, one of the Billys looks up at Longshot and tilts his head to the side. "What kinda goofball are you supposed to be?" he asks, still emptying the used games bin into a bag. In the Radioshack, a half dozen of Billy Numerous barge in. One hipchecks the kid with the controller and takes it from him. "One side, junior! This looks like fun!" he declares. The others start stealing things. They haven't exactly notices that Robo and Tin Can aren't display pieces or mascots yet. There's a commotion from inside the sunglass shop as the crowd scatters after three Billys run in. After a short pause, one gets launched out of the store and into a nearby fountain. "So not cool," Superboy declares as he chases the remaining two out of the store. Mend comes running out...but the guy's scattered everywhere. And there may or may not be a prime to beat up on. Instead, she heads for one of the clothing stores, which has a couple of Billies in it...and a couple of cowering customers. And a very cowering sales assistant who clearly needs her help. She vanishes inside. A moment later, one of the racks slides out through the door, knocked aside by a tussle between Mend and two Billies. Right now, she's winning. Atomic Robo's eyes swoop across the scene, steadily taking it in; metal 'lids' descend from above and below those glowing blue lenses -- giving his otherwise unexpressive face a narrow-eyed, irritated look. At Tin Can's question, he cants his head -- inspecting the mechanical power armor. "I'm a five hundred pound robot," he informs her, as if this was answer enough. And then: "One second. I'll call the police." Robo reaches up to touch the side of his head with a finger, putting in a 911 call -- even as he steps back into the Radioshack and politely reaches out to try and snatch a Billy Numerous by his neck-scruff. If successful, he will heft the duplicate up into the air. "Yes, operator? There's a metahuman incident involving a duplicator at the SoHo mall." As he does so, he's scanning the Billy Numerous clone very closely -- with eyes that can perceive just about every electromagnetic wavelength out there. To determine if there is any distinction between the clones and the original, or if they're all essentially identical. "The name is Longshot, Tin Can. Love the name by the way, very descriptive and evocative," Longshot said quickly "And a team-up definitely seems in order. And I excel at team-ups." To Billy's comment to him he said, "I'm the goofball who's going to take you and your multiplisious minions down. Longshot's the name!" With that his left eye started to glow white as he thrown the set of blades at Billy, the intention of ripping through that bag he has and making the games he's trying to steal onto the floor, "And for the record GameStart has a very good trade-in policy if you want to get games cheap you should just bring in some of your unwanted games and trade them in for store credit. No need to steal!" "What no way in hell!" Eddie grabs a tray of food and whips it one of the Billies then cracking the second with a punch. "Someone is gonna get hurt but it's not gonna be us!" Shouts Eddie as he faces down the third Billy. "Come on We're Hungry" "I wouldn't wish to assume what you were designed for, Sir." The Tin Can replies to Atomic Robo, "I am the Tin Can." Definitely not sounding like a human voice, might be a robot or a suit of power armor, though the helmet probably makes it lean towards the latter." She too picks up one of the Billies, and states, "Enable Arc Taser." Electricity starts flowing from her hands, it's at a nonlethal level, but should be enough to know out. "Thank you, Longshot." Again, slight but noticable change in pitch. "Let's do this." The duplicate is rather easily grabbed, too distracted by stealing roombas to notice until he's in the air. He flails a little before staring up at Robo. "Holey...would ya look at this thing! I want it!" he says. While the scan reveals they're all essentially identical, there's suddenly a lot more Billys climbing all over Robo. One even throws a bag over his head as they try to pull him to the ground. Apparently they think he's a toy. A really big toy. The tussel may be going Mend's way for now but the two Billys...one wearing a woman's swim-suit over his costume...just grin. They keep the fight going but suddenly back off when two more start pushing a clothing rack at her like a battering ram. Down in food court the Billys are pretty shocked by Eddie's resistance. The one still standing scowls and the others in the room turn towards Eddie. And they rush, one leaping at Eddie to stab him with a spork. Blades tear through fabric and Billy stares for a moment. "Why you little..." the first Billy scowls. "Eat bad games!" a second calls, throwing returned and abandoned copies of Aliens: Colonial Marines at Longshot like shuriken. The Billy grabbed Tin Can ends up tazed, two more Billys falling away from him and looking dazed. "Hey! No zappin' me!" another Billy exclaims before he and two more start pushing a shelf over onto Tin Can. Superboy meanwhile is knocking Billys aside as they rush him. One jumps on his back and starts multiplying. "Dude! I have seen this movie and it so isn't my scene!" he scowls, getting dogpiled. Mend twists to the side, grabbing the top of the clothes rack to evade...and hopefully see it go slamming into various other Billys. She lands on the counter. Great. This is going to make way too much in the way of collateral damage. "What say, boys, we take this game outside?" Oh, part of her is enjoying this, but... "--hzn." The numerous Billies that rapidly begin to appear on top of Robo don't seem to phase him much; even the bag that gets thrown over his head doesn't really cause much of a response. As they begin piling on, Robo begins to move, albeit slowly. Although the slowness is more for the sake of all the clamboring Billy's than his own. "Guys, I'm basically a tank," Robo informs the piling on group of duplicates as he walks toward the door -- apparently able to see through the bag! "You realize you're all trying to wrestle a tank?" He's making his way toward Tin Can, step by step. A metal hand extending out toward her from the pile of writhing Billies, and... "Hey," Robo rumbles, "do me a favor? Taser me." "Oh please! It'll take more than a game that disrespects its source material to take me out." Longshot jumped towards them, tapping down copies of the flying crappy games as he jumped and flipped through them. He reached under his jacket and pulled out another set of blades. Throwing them the second hits the ground about five feet away from the two Billys. Directly at their feet, the intention to cut into their boots and stick them to the floor. His heart is true, luck should do the rest. The Billy that goes to stab Eddie finds that Eddie doesn even try to move. He stabs Eddie with the spork, but being a spork it just snaps. "Really?" Eddie snatches the Billy up and slams through a table in the food court. Once that is delt with the symbiote covers Eddie's face. Venom then begins to shoot webs at the other billies that he can get a clear shot at cfocusing mainly on those threating and shaking down people. The Tin Can is covered in shelves and goods, she pushes it back up, trying to cause as little damage as possible. The Arc Taser is used at a couple others when they approach, and then Robo comes over. "Yes, sir." Bzap. "Disengage Arc Taser." She instructs afterwards, the electricity fading as she starts using more physical force, rubber batons extending from her arms as she aims for the backs of heads and other knockout blows with them. "Cease and desist your interruption of this mall's business." The spork-weilding Billy just makes a face. "Holy hell I thought these things were supposed to be stronger," he says, throwing the spork handle down on the ground. He ends up yelping when slammed through that table. Others end up struggling against the webbing, lots of complaints coming from them. Another pair are done stuffing their faces with french fries. "Hey!" one calls out, getting fry pieces everywhere. "Take this freak!" the two yell before flinging a basket of onion rings fresh out of the deep frier at Eddie. "We've stolen a tank before! Ain't that right, Billy?" "Sure is, Billy!" two of the climbers converse as more and more pile on. Other latch onto legs, trying to knock Robo off his feet. When Robo gets tazed, most of the Billys fall off him but some stay hanging atop him. And even more end up multiplying and looking confused. "What in tarnation?" one mumbles. Tin Can meanwhile has to deal with a few Billys that have retrieved baseball bats from the toy store. And they're ready to have a dight with her and the batons. "Not a chance, sweetheart!" one Billy replies. "Unless you'd rather go get a bite to eat with Billy," another flashes Mend a flirty grin. He's immediately hit by another Billy launched from the pile that Superboy just busted free from. And he's looking rather annoyed due to the now mising leather jacket and fresh tears in his costume. "Okay, now I'm mad." And with the customers, by now, clear, except for that one shop assistant, who's nicely cowering. Mend drops a flashbang between the Billies and then vaults for the exit. "Fire in the hole!" she calls, far, FAR too cheerfully. Oh, she loves that particular toy. "Guys, I'm five hundred pounds. All I have to do is fall down on top of you," Robo announces to the Billies who are still clinging to his form, post-tazing. The attempts to trip his legs up are -- well, about as successful as you'd expect an attempt to trip up a half-ton robot to go. "Alright, you know what? Screw this." Metal hands reach up -- to seize hold of ankles, wrists, shoulders, necks -- and start flinging' Billies to the ground. Snatch, throw. Snatch, throw. "You have the ''dumbest supervillain power." Robo's making his way to follow in Tin Can's wake; when the Billies emerge with baseball bats, he makes his way toward them -- STOMP, STOMP, STOMP. "Oh, no. You've got baseball bats. I'm really shivering in my super-dense bulletproof metal chasis now," Robo thrums. Longshot is starting to notice a little pattern to all of this mess. He runs over towards where Tin Can is facing down a couple of Billys and reached into his own utility belt pulling out a grabbling hook and metal line connected to it. A quick spin around he throws it at a long ark hoping to get it to wrap around a few of them and yank them away from the power armored hero. "I'm starting to notice that this Billy guy basically makes more of himself if we hurt him. It might be a better idea to do a round up rather than a brawlfest. Granted I'm not exactly a combat expert or anything and I haven't had a chance to actually read them to know. But I'm just going with my gut on this one." Venom dodges away from the boiling hot oil drenched onions. Venom then charges and plows through on of the billies putting him into the counter behind him. Venom is on top snarling and about to tear into him with his claws when the second onion ring throwing Billie catches his attention from the corner of his eye. Venom gives chase to to him. The Tin Can deflects most baseball bats, the others she just tanks. The armor was designed to take a little more than baseball bats, despite how it may look. "Good plan, Longshot." She calls over to the guy, then instructs her computer, "Calculate optimal method of rounding up these Billies. Incorporate floorplan." Then, a few moments later, she has a plan. "Switch to radio frequency of 205.21 Megahertz." Assuming Atomic Robo can pick up what she's saying like that, an audio message is broadcasted over the indicated frequency, containing the same altered voice, "I'd recommend trying to serve as bait, taunt them and draw them to the theater, try to get them all in one room, and then we'll lock them in." "Hey! Where ya'll goin'?! Get back here!" the two trapped Billys call as Longshot heads out of the store. Give them a few moments to figure out they can just take off their boots. A few other Billys are caught in Longshot's trap and end up yanked onto their rears. Of course after listening to Longshot, they grin. "We don't need you to hurt us to make more of us," one speaks up. With a blur there's suddenly more of him and they're leaping to tackle Longshot. As Venom chases after the one Billy, others are throwing hot food at him too. Others are flinging chairs and tables from the food court. Flashbangs bring startled yelps and curses as the goggle-wearing teens end up stumbling around blinded. They don't stay that way long, Superboy quickly grabbing and flinging them towards the fountain and massive ball pin playpen in the mall. There's no reply to Robo from the Billys. They're still too tazed and dazed. Some make funny noises when slammed into the ground though. His warnings don't seem to faze the villainous teens either. They're swinging bats at him and Tin Can even if the bats break. No, Billy Numerous isn't the smartest guy there is. After Tin Can's announcement, Superboy appears at the door to the store. "Hey! You guys get the place ready and I can get 'em all in there." "Thanks!" Mend calls to Superboy as she emerges from the store, looking around for more Billies or for which store Superboy was at. Hrm. "If hitting them makes more of them, then I won't hit any more." She heads over towards Superboy, ignoring Billies unless they get in her way. "Engh." Robo catches the radio signal after Tin Can's announcement; he swoops his optics around to find a suitable store-front, and... "Alright, alright --" He's stepping toward one of the storefronts next to Superboy; it looks like a theater of some sort. He reaches to snatch a Billy on the way. "I'll go and lock down the emergency exits in here, make sure no one else is inside -- just load them up in here and guard the entrance -- make sure none of them can get out. We'll just keep throwing them in here," he rumbles, marching inside to do just that. "See this is why I don't do plans all that much," Longshot jumps straight into the air as the charging Billys come at him. Honestly, acrobatic combat was better plans for him and staying one step ahead of even multiple combatants isn't that hard for him, "Plans are really not my thing. I kind of suck at them it seems." He flipped over the Billys and as he did he reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a set of metal pins, "So apparently it's at will, at harm and we're all out numbered. It's really quite frustrating. Wish Shulkie was hear she's a lot more clever than I am." His new plan was to wait for the Billys to charge him again and throw the metal pins that make a rather strong net, at them. Venom his pelted by the furniture and scolding food. He winces back and is stopped momentarily till he picks up a mass of chairs and tables and with a roar hurls them at the billy in the food court. Venom in a even more violent rage now begins to pounce at anything that looks like a billy, claws out. "you are almost as infuriating as the spiderman! We will cut through every one of you till there are none left moving!" When Atomic Robo prepares the theater, The Tin Can starts herding them that way, on the way, she asides to Venom. "There's a lot of them in there. You should focus on that." While she herds more in that direction, adding in, "Tank-strength robot ripe for the stealing right in that theater over there!" Because these guys don't seem very smart, she basically allows them to hit her, it doesn't seem to have much effect on her armor /anyway./ What's inside the theater? Well a lot of Billys. Some are watching movies, others are ransacking the popcorn and candy bins. One's even parked himself under the ICEE machine and is letting the machine unload right into his mouth. The Billys may not be smart but they are scarable. Once Venom starts clawing and slashing, they start running. Things thrown are to delay Venom rather than attack. Billys charge Longshot only to end up netted into a struggling ball of annoyed teenage villain. Hopefully he has more of those since there are still more of Billy Numerous. As soon as Robo has the theater ready, Superboy's springing into action. Tapping super speed, he becomes and red and blue blur as he shoots around rounding up Billys and dropping them off inside the theater. Mend doesn't have that sort of trick for rounding up Billies. She tosses another flash bang, then glares at Venom after it goes off. "Is somebody going to have to sit on him?" She doesn't know him, but he's not playing the play that needs to be played, as it were. Really, for Robo's purposes, it's just a matter of sealing the exits -- which he ends up doing with his bare ROBO HANDS. There's a creak at each door as he bends them shut; a little collateral damage, but he should be able to fix it once they're done rounding them up. Once he's got all the fire exits sealed, he's marching back to the front exit -- swatting aside any Billies who get in his way. As the blur of red and blue swoops past him, he steps out to guard the entrance... right before catching sight of a rampaging venom. At Mend's comment, Robo swivels his head to look at her briefly -- before turning back to Venom, and... "I'll check on it. Just make sure none of them get out." He's reaching for his lightning gun, switching it on with a hrrrrm... making his way toward the rampaging symbiote. "Hey! Buddy! Relax, huh? This isn't late-night cable; lay off with the clawing gorefest." No, that's the only net he had. He was a gladiator from another dimension who gets mind wiped a lot. He didn't have pockets like the Doctor. Longshot moved quickly, "Alright enough with the physical violence, while it can be fun and many people find it to be great entertainment, but I'm getting a little tired to be honest." He leapt towards the Billys he had captured in the net and he reached out and touched one of their shoulders through the net activating his psychometric insight. Hoping to find some sort of method that can stop Billy before he starts multiplying again. Some sort of insight into the situation to help the rag-tag band of heroes stop the assault of the teenage pests. Getting them in the theatre was a good start, but if he can keep multiplying he'll still manage to break out somehow. He was staying as alert as he could while doing this but in reality he was going to open himself up to attack so he needed to do this quickly. Venom graps the webbed up billies and starts chucking them into the center of the mall. "Hey come back We've got your friends don't your remember?!" Venom is making a ruckus and calling a lot of attention to himself. He doesn't know other heroes are here he just thinks the mall is over run with this swarm of punks. Venom sees a straggler running up the escalator and he leaps/webs over in front of him. "Don't run away so soon we were just getting started!" The Tin Can decides /others/ can deal with Venom. Since he's only targetting Billy's, she doesn't quite think he's a problem as much as making a problem worse. She quickly hacks into the intercom of this mall instead, fiddling with her voice modulator to make her voice resemble a typical bored pretending to be enthusiastic announcer person. "Now playing in the Theater, with free entry, Billy Numerous and the Robot Theft." She kinda doubts it'll work, but she figures it's worth a try. Roy Harper has disconnected. There's not too much for Longshot to pick up on. A bunch of Billys being dumb teenage boys at their hideout, some sitting down to go over the layout of the mall. There is mention of 'not making too many' though. Billy has an upper limit but there's no specifics. It's hard to tell if it's the announcement itself or the fact that someone to fight is there but Billys attack Tin Can and Mend. Others get scooped up by the super speedy Superboy, including that straggler from right in from of Venom and the netted group from near Longshot. The Billy-pile in the theater is growing by the second. It won't be long until they're all rounded up. Mend grabs the two Billies trying to dogpile on her and manages to shove them towards the theater...not bad for a girl with no super strength. "Get in there. And stay in there." Hopefully he'll de-duplicate or whatever he does and try and sneak out once he's in there. Meanwhile, Robo's coming up toward Venom. The honolulu-clad robot doesn't make any motion to reach for the holstered lightning gun at his hip (even though it's now on), not wanting to spook the guy -- waving him down as he climbs up the escalator. "Hey. Hey! Freaky looking... thing. You okay? Violence is all over. You can put away the claws and teeth, alright? Cops are on their way." Now that his Billys were taken care Longshot said, "Well they have an upper limit. That's all well and good. Doesn't really help though." He looked up and grabbed some of his throwing knives back up ready to deal with any Billy stragglers that he would encounter. He was sort of hoping the same thin that Mend was, that he'd un-duplicate so he can get out. Otherwise he knew the violence would start up again. He had a thought to call Jennifer and get her down here, but at the same time the super fast guy seemed pretty capable of taking care of things when he was on his A-Game. No need adding a She-Hulk to the mix. "Are we done then? I think I'm still technically wanted by the police. Jenny says she's taking care of it though," Longshot said in rapid-fire, though he was peering at the situation with Venom hoping it doesn't get worse. "Aww come on We were just starting to enjoy ourselves." Venom seems to snap right out of the the berzerker rage he was in. "GRR Fine. They owe me a meal though" Venom thinks for a moment before marching back down to the food court. Venom begins looking around for something unclaimed that he can take for his trouble. Tin Can decides that now is a good time to, "Reengage Arc Taser." She tries to shock the ones on top of her, before trying to escape. With them seemingly all being caught in there, it's time to go. But not before throwing Longshot a card, 'If you need my help again, tweet something with #callingthetincan' in it. Departure time after that. Shoved, tazed, punched, netted, webbed, slashed...that's one big mass of Billys in that theater. And once the last one's tossed in, Superboy is heat-visioning the door shut. With that done, he lets out a sigh. Landing, the teen of steel scowls. His costume is ripped in various places, his jacket is gone, and his sunglasses are shattered. He's unhappy. He watches the others go before turning to Mend. "Hey. Stickin' around to help with the cops or takin' off?" Meanwhile, there's a lot of discarded and thrown food in the food court for Venom to find. Some abandoned shopping bags too. "I'm registered. I'll stick around." She stretches a little bit. "Any bets he'll reabsorb his dupes and try to dart out the door when the cops go in?" Robo flicks the lightning gun off; it powers down with a tiny WHUM-whum-whum. "Good," he responds to Venom, turning his head back toward the theater... and then, with a heavy, synthesized sigh: "I'm gonna have to talk with the police, aren't I?" Longshot catches the card easily enough and says, "Why thank you, Tin Can! And apparently you can keep up with me at LovethatLongshot.tumblr.com and facebook.com/LongshotLovin. Though I don't run them, they are just fan sites dedicated to me." With that the Loveable Longshot was off on his own. Like he had said previously, he wasn't 100% sure he wasn't still wanted for some thief jobs he did back before he was mind wiped and sent back here. It was really a confusing setup that he hadn't even worked out entirely. "Thanks for the adventure guys, see you around I'm sure. I swear I end up at the center of these things all the time and I'm not even technically a super-hero. Though sometimes I remember being one. Ah well, that's what happens when you get mind wiped as much as I do." And with that Longshot leapt over the railing and onto the ground floor to start running the back way out. Venom grabs a bag full of panda express thatn smells good and makes a stealth escape before police arrive. "I figure he might try to stampede out," Superboy mentions to Mend. Running a hand through his hair, he takes a moment to check Longshot out as he goes. Shaking his head as the blond leaves, Kon gives Mend the same look over. Atomic Robo gets a quick X-ray to see if anyone is inside a suit IronMan style before Conner waves a hand. "Only if you want to, metal dude. Feel free to take off. Me and Mend got this." "Yeah. We can handle it." She glances at the robot...but does make the man in suit assumption, right now. She'll be fascinated once she learns the truth. "And I'm fine, Superboy. A few bruises. Nothing to worry about." If there's anybody inside of that suit, Superboy's not going to be able to tell; whatever the metal's made out of, it's dense enough to reflect radiation exposure. "Hzn. Thanks," Robo replies, to Superboy -- glancing over his shoulder toward the exit. He doesn't run, but he makes his way on out of here. Category:Log